The keyword in the following sentences is “should.” Because Fridayy‘s recently released double album, Some Days I’m Good, Some Days I’m Not, should be destined for success — perhaps even Grammy-nominated success. A well-balanced odyssey that lives up to its title, the project declares itself a mixture of what should be hit records, like the Kehlani-featured “Saving My Love,” “One Call Away” with Chris Brown and “Baddest In The Room.” Yet, the meat and potatoes of the album are when it tugs on the emotional heartstrings in songs like “Make It Home,” “Without You,” and the gospel-influenced “Better Days.”
Hands down, though, the spiritual apex of the project arrives on “Proud of Me,” thanks to a guest verse for the ages from Meek Mill. In the court of public opinion, Meek hasn’t exactly had the grandest time as of late. The last year of his life involved his name thrown in and around the case against Sean “Diddy” Combs. Musically, his career wasn’t making much noise either. His X (formerly Twitter) account continued to be a vessel for his innermost thoughts broadcasted on a public platform. In many ways, a platform has become Meek’s worst enemy. Which is why his confessional on Fridayy’s album carries so much weight.
It seems unfair to write. At the very least, it feels like pigeonholing him into a box. Black art has long only been seen as grief-stricken and traumatic. Nonetheless, Meek’s finest form of rapping discusses the sights, experiences and losses he survived growing up on the streets of Philadelphia. For any knock about Meek as an artist, one thing he’s always excelled at is graphic street novels. He’s in a constant battle with survivor’s remorse. He’s a constant reminder of the long tentacles of the criminal justice system in America. And he embodies those decades and generations of emotions when they boil over.
Losing their father isn’t the only thread bonding Fridayy and Meek. It is one of the most, if not the most, personal connection, though. A tragic commonality in Meek and Fridayy’s life is that losing a father can cripple a young Black boy. Following his father’s death last year, Fridayy said “Proud of Me” was not just his favorite song but also therapy. And both artists connected over their mutual losses.
“I ain’t gonna lie. Meek stayed in the booth for 11 hours. He struggled for probably three [hours]. He just stayed in there,” Fridayy told journalist Keith Nelson Jr. “I’m talking he did not even drink water or nothing. He just stayed in there. We were there from 11:00 PM to 11:00 AM. When he finished that verse, all I wanted to do was cry the whole time.”
The death of Meek’s father isn’t breaking news. Last March, Meek took to social media to speak about his slain father, who was killed when he was only five years old in 1992.
“My dad died … doing an armed robbery,” Meek posted. “That made me wanna get rich, that was the get back. The person that killed my dad probably 60 … talking about dead people don’t hurt me … having all your homies killed behind your mistake you gotta drink lean constantly.”
This verse was different. It wasn’t a rapper being introspective on a random feature over a random beat. It was a young boy who grew to be an imperfect man — and a face of the conversation surrounding criminal justice reform — exposing his soul about the single greatest tragedy in a life no stranger to tragedy. The tragedy would open up the gateway to so many Meek would face in his life.
“Hundred dollar nightmares turn to million dollar dreams/Ridin’ past the block where my dad got left on the scene/ Look at your lil’ boy now, we done turned into kinds/ S— turned me to a grown man ‘fore I was 17,” Meek rapped.
In May 2024, a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association concluded approximately 1.19 million children between the years 1999 and 2020 lost a parent to either drug overdose or gun violence. A stark 11% difference between the years was discovered, and Black youth were the ones overwhelmingly impacted. This was primarily due to fathers being killed. “[American] youth are at high and increasing risk of experiencing parental death by drugs or firearms,” the report stated. “Efforts to stem this problem should prioritize averting drug overdoses and firearm violence, especially among structurally marginalized groups.”
Meek lost his father long before the study kicked off, but he’s still one of those ghetto babies. A boy who somehow found a way to become a man despite all the hurdles in front of him. And a success story without its fair share of self-induced and societal-mandated pitfalls.
“Scared to show up at your grave ’cause I might try dig you out/ Like you know I did this s— for you, Meek pleaded with his father. Never heard you say it back, still be like, ‘I miss you too’/ And when I catch the n— that did this to you, he gettin’ sent to you.”
How often has America overlooked the cries besieging Black communities? How frequently has it labeled them as cries from the ghetto and from second-class citizens who would never graduate past the only circumstances they knew? The answer is so often that it defines large pockets of American history. Meek is a product of American disinvestment. He’s a project baby born during the years of Reaganomics, post-MOVE bombing and an involuntary soldier in the War on Drugs that began long before his birth.
There’s a generation of lost kids. A generation of lost souls running up on anyone deemed a lick or manageable threat. And a generation of Black boys and girls deemed irreparable due to being products of their environment. In one way or another, Meek checks off all those boxes.
There’s a visceral reaction that comes with Meek pouring his soul out when he spewed, “Skippin’ school, daddy dead, f— the principal/ She think I’m missin’ screws, when really, I’m just missing you!” In a world that’s as connected and disconnected as it’s ever been, Meek’s verse is a reminder of what music feels like when it doesn’t just touch the soul but wraps around it. His head-scratching social media antics, the salacious rumors involving his name — it all went mute for a sliver of time. Throughout his career, the spoils that came with the music have never been far from his lyrical boasts. The Audemar watches, the foreign cars, the estates in different cities. They’ve all become synonymous with Meek’s braggadocious personality. But the realization hit him by the end of his verse, where he’d already pleaded to relinquish every material item to reclaim time with loved ones like Robbie and Terry.
“Money rule the world, but you can’t pay God with it, Meek concluded, I’d spend it all just to get back my n—.“
Another artist or another song may be as vulnerable as Meek was, but in 2025, it’s difficult to envision someone being more than him. “Proud of Me” is a career-defining verse and a publicly personal moment an artist can have on wax. It’s a survivor-by-proxy of the gun violence the country has long refused to remedy. Real-life Black accounts from real-life Black communities are in critical platforms like this because real-life Black history and stories are seen as enemies of the state.
Meek Mill made his father immortal in “Proud of Me.” He became more than a nameless victim and a statistic. In the process, he reminded anyone who listened that, at his best, very few can create art from grief like Meek. As for what society did to make it so that Meek had plenty of pain to draw from, that’s an enormous responsibility and conversation that seems less and less likely to hold itself accountable by the day.